City of London Police revealed that the couple are from the Greater Manchester area and the value of the music on just one of the hard drives is estimated to be in excess of £350,000.

The search engine giant has announced that legitimate services such as Spotify and Netflix can now pay to be listed above search results to tempt users away from illegal sites.

Households suspected of illegal downloading will receive up to four email warnings per year, though they will be educational and not punitive in nature.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has delivered a court order to UK ISPs, telling them to block access to 21 websites linked to pirated music, including BitSnoop, FilesTube and ExtraTorrent.

The BPI is now targeting Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents as file sharing sites are again accused of copyright infringement.

Newzbin2 was just the start